Paris swooned for the funny fellow in yellow yesterday and it was simply magnifique.

Pedalling from a council estate in Kilburn all the way into legend down the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Bradley Wiggins offered the perfect hors d’oeuvre at the start of British sport’s historic sporting week.

Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist ever to win the world’s grandest bike race, the Tour de France, cheered on by thousands of fans who had made the pilgrimage from the UK because they were determined to be able to say they were there for a moment of unbeatable theatre, to salute perhaps the greatest individual sporting feat by any British sportsman in history.

Indeed, as the 32-year-old Londoner stood on the podium dressed in the primrose Maillot Jaune against the matchless backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe, it is hard to imagine that any performance in the Olympic Games, which open on Friday, could possibly match the magnitude of his achievement in this 2,172-mile epic.

The flag-waving British fans evidently agreed as Wiggins, a very laconic English hero, told them cheerily from the top step: “We’re going to start drawing the raffle numbers now” before offering the parting salute: “Have a safe journey home — and don’t get too drunk!”

Some chance of that. Here was an achievement so unfathomable that it merited champers all round, even if Lesley Garrett — swishing a Union Jack dress around while offering an OTT rendition of the National Anthem next to the podium — did seem to bring a slightly pained look to the champion’s face.

In 99 editions of the Tour (it began in 1903 but did not run in the war years) nobody from the land of the bike clip across the Channel had ever come remotely near to winning sport’s most murderous endurance test. The challenge of the British had been, for the most part, seen here as either risible or invisible.

Yet on a day on which Mark Cavendish, the world’s greatest sprinter, won the final stage on the Champs-Elysées for the fourth consecutive year, British cycling celebrated a seventh win of this Tour and two British riders, Wiggins and Chris Froome, finished first and second overall, this really had become what the hosts had dreaded as La Promenade des Anglais.

It was all quite surreal. Never has there been an attack of Les Rosbifs quite like it. Thousands had piled across on Eurostar, boats and planes for the weekend, hooked by a new cult hero for British sport. One who even the French had learnt to appreciate. L’Equipe, the French sports newspaper, had already christened him as “Wiggo le Froggy”, naturally taking a bit of credit for his victory by noting how he had cut his teeth in professional road cycling over here. They were also particularly admiring of his marvellous rouflaquettes — “The most famous sideburns since Elvis Presley”.

The Parisians may have been more than a little fed up about losing the 2012 Games to their neighbours but, sacre bleu, now it was also their greatest sporting treasure, too. Whisper it, but no French cyclist has won Le Tour for 27 years.

Yet for all that, they appeared to recognise a kindred spirit in this intriguing, eccentric Londoner, somebody who is a bit different, a guitar-playing, plain-speaking Mod who was in love with their Tour as a boy, hanging posters of cycling heroes on the wall of his bedroom in Kilburn while all his mates were worshipping Gary Lineker or Paul Gascoigne.

Wiggins remembered how he had once come to Paris for this great sporting ritual of the final stage as a 13 year-old being treated by his mother. He thought to himself then that it was just a pipe dream that he could one day win the thing himself but as he addressed the crowd from the podium, he pointed to his mother, Linda, and said: “Some dreams do come true. My old mum over there? Her son has just won the Tour de France!”

Later, he said it must have been “an incredible feeling” for her to watch him stand at the top of the podium and also paid tribute to the support he received from British fans.

“Now I’ve come out of my bubble I start to realise what it means to all these people who’ve come over here,” he said. “That turn near the Arc was just a sea of Brits and the noise was phenomenal.

“I’d like to think my victory stands for a lot more than just adding my name to the names that went before me. I think cycling is changing and I hope my victory goes down for the right reasons. I like to think it will be remembered in a positive sense.

“I hope this gives people hope and belief because this is a fantastic sport and people love it.”

It has often been a hard road for Wiggins. His father, Gary, was a hard-drinking and brawling Australian cyclist who left his first wife and baby daughter to seek his fortune on the European circuit.

Wiggins senior met Bradley’s mother, Linda, then a 17-year-old spectator, while racing in London. They married and Bradley was born in Ghent, Belgium, where his father was based, but Gary Wiggins walked out on them two years later.

Mrs Wiggins and her son returned to London and lived in a flat with her parents, George and Maureen, while she worked as a clerk.

In 1992, Wiggins watched on television as Chris Boardman won gold in the 4km pursuit at the Barcelona Olympics. After his mother explained that it was his father’s best event, he became hooked on cycling. But he did not meet his father again until he was 18 when, hearing that his son was training in Australia, Wiggins Snr arranged a reunion.

They met again after Wiggins won gold in the Sydney Olympics and his father persuaded him to enter a race at his local club to impress his friends. When he came only second, Gary Wiggins berated him and insisted that he had been the better cyclist.

In 2008, the 55 year-old was found dead in the street in Aberdeen, New South Wales. He had been assaulted and his attackers were never caught.

Wiggins reckoned that thoughts of some of those struggles — his beloved grandfather died while he was on the Tour two years ago — had preoccupied him during Saturday’s time trial to Chartres as he pedalled to victory. That win meant overall victory was already his — barring an accident — allowing yesterday’s final 120km stage from Rambouillet to Paris to become the traditional ceremonial parade for the race leader.

Still, he had one piece of serious business left, to help Cavendish win the last stage, just as he hopes to enable the sprinter to win the Olympic road race, which finishes on The Mall on Saturday.

“It’s a little weird to leave Paris without a party but now everything turns to the Olympics,” said Wiggins. “I’ve got an Olympic time trial to try and win.”

As well as a new generation of cyclists to woo. Wiggins is an outspoken critic of a British culture that embraces those famous for merely being famous.

“If I’m held up as an example to kids, then that’s fantastic,” he said. “Because I was inspired by people like that. It’s nice to be recognised and respected and have people look up to you for those reasons. And not to be like, whatever … Jordan, Peter Andre.

“Hopefully someone will see this and go, 'I want to be like Brad Wiggins, I want to go and ride my local time trial.’ It’s nice because you are actually doing something through your life that is inspirational.”